Bean broth, bean juice, bean liquid. Whatever appetising name you like to call it (there aren’t any), that murky liquid from a tin of butter beans or the cooking water from a tender chickpea, is liquid gold. Liquid gold! Especially, when saved for a rainy, bare-fridge kinda day.

That day was yesterday. A jar of chickpea cooking liquid sat on the fridge shelf alongside a lone onion and an egg. The hummus (pictured) had been eaten.

Depressing. Even by February’s standards. So I chopped the onion and fried it in oil, cos that’s what you do when you want to cook something isn’t it? In went the chickpea juice, a smidge of bouillon and a good splash of hot water.

At this point, I found two wilted kale leaves, which was exciting. I chopped them and added them to the mix, and brought it all to the boil. Taste and season.

I beat the egg and stirred it in, off the heat – the egg span into white ribbons, the soup thickened into a nice creamy-looking broth. It looked better already. Bloody good in fact.